Garden arches are one of the simplest, yet most eye-catching ways to support climbing plants, bringing additional flowers and greenery to your outdoor space. While fences and walls are instantly improved by a flowering wisteria or well-maintained ivy, a garden arch offers the chance to introduce climbing plants anywhere in your garden, not just along its boundaries.
An arch gives you the opportunity to introduce a lot more plants to your garden, whether you’re after an extra burst of colour, fragrance or texture. Additional flowers can provide vital nectar for pollinating insects. Arches with built-in planters let you grow climbers in areas with little or no soil, while arches with decorative designs can help improve the aesthetics of your garden before the climbers have even begun growing.
Arches are both decorative and functional – they can help to define paths, lead you through to different areas, create privacy screens, provide an entryway to the veg patch or simply provide an attractive centrepiece to your outdoor space.
They come in a range of materials, styles and with added features so you can choose a garden arch to suit your needs. Metal arches provide an elegant but sturdy modern option, while wooden ones offer a robust, rustic, more traditional feel. Some can even be painted to match your style and colour scheme.
If you want to learn more about garden arches and which plants to grow on them, check out our guide to the best plants for a garden arch.
The best garden arches in 2024
Blooma Cottage Apex Top Softwood Arch
This unfussy wooden garden arch is perfect for cottage gardens and gives a rustic, woodland look without pretension. Sturdy and robust the arch is perfect for heavier climbers like wisteria.
Price: £135
Buy Blooma Cottage Apex Top Softwood Arch at B&Q
Smart Garden Elegant Woodland Wooden Garden Arch
The trellis along the sides of this arch suits more delicate climbers such as jasmine and honeysuckle. The bowed top is graceful without compromising on stability.
Price: £79.99
Buy Smart Garden Elegant Woodland Wooden Garden Arch at Amazon
Round Arch
This twist on a classic is perfect for modern or Scandinavian-style gardens. British-made, this strong arch gives the form and functionality of a more standard arch with a contemporary feel.
Price: £459.99
Agriframes Wall Arch
This wall arch is a great way to bring a garden arch into a more cramped area of the garden. It’s fantastic for brightening up plain garden walls, or creating paths along them to lead to other areas of the garden.
Price: £152.00
Buy Agriframes Wall Arch at Agriframes
Agriframes Vine Arch
Perfect for amateur winemakers, this arch is designed to hold heavy grapevines. A clever way to introduce both decorative and productive grapes into the wider design of your garden, it’s strong enough to also hold wisteria and rambler roses.
Price: £499.95
Buy Agriframes Vine Arch at Pamona Fruits
Relaxdays Rose Arch with Planters
This unusual arch is made from powder-coated iron and has planters at the base, ideal for showing off whichever pots you fancy. Weighing only 13kg, this arch is easy to lift and move around the garden if you fancy a change.
Price: £144.46
Buy Relaxdays Rose Arch with Planter at Amazon
Mercia Bow Top Wooden Garden Arch
This simple wooden arch is perfect for sitting over a path or used as the centrepiece in a smaller garden. The frame comes with a 15-year anti-rot guarantee and its lattice design offers support for climbing plants.
Price: £129.99
Buy the Mercia Bow Top Wooden Garden Arch at Robert Dyas
Fiora Metal Garden Arch
This arch is designed with a floral pattern, so even before your climbing plants start growing it provides a decorative addition to your outdoor space. The metal is rust-resistant and it weighs only 5kg, so the arch can be moved easily.
Price: £44.99
Buy the Fiora Metal Garden Arch at Wayfair
Where to put a garden arch?
Before buying your arch, it’s important to decide where you’re going to put it, so you choose the right size, shape and style. You also need to make sure it will fit comfortably in your space and won’t overcrowd neighbouring plants or structures. The key factors that can help you select the right location are the size of your garden, the aesthetic you want to create and the plants you wish to grow.
The size of your garden will affect the number of positioning options you have. If your space is small, then you may only be able to put the arch over a path or against a fence. You may also want an arch that isn’t overly tall or broad, to take up less space and not block too much light. With a larger garden you’ll have more options when it comes to positioning, and to ensure it has impact, you may prefer a taller, wider arch.
You probably already have a vision in mind of how you want the arch to enhance your garden, and this should help you position it. For example, if you want it to work as a focal point, then place it centrally or where it’s most easily seen. If you want to create an entryway to the rest of your outdoor space, site it at the point most frequently used to enter your garden. Maybe you want it as a privacy screen or to cheer up a pathway – in both cases consider where it will look and work best. Take some measurements too, so ensure the arch will fit your proposed space.
The final consideration is the plants you wish to grow on it. You should ensure the location receives the right amount of light for the plants you plan to grow.
Plants for a sunny arch
- Wisteria is a classic choice, flowering in spring and summer, with scented, pendent blooms that will hang over an archway, complemented by the lush foliage.
- Many roses have naturally arching growth, so they’re perfectly suited to growing over a sunny arch. See our grow guides for climbing roses and rambling roses.
- Lots of clematis can be grown over garden arches. For large flowers, go for a Group 2 clematis such as ‘Niobe’. From Group 3 try Clematis tangutica, a vigorous scrambler with yellow, waxy bell-shaped flowers in late summer followed by silky seedheads that last well into winter.
- Annual climbers – or perennials treated as such, come with the bonus that you can try different combinations each year. Try canary creeper (Tropaeolum peregrinum), sweet peas, which have the added bonus of scent and are particularly good if you have a arch near seating areas, and Morning Glory vine.
Plants for a shady arch
- Climbing honeysuckle flower in summer, in shades of yellow, white, orange and pink and are a magnet for wildlife.
- For sun or partial shade, Chinese magnolia vine, Schisandra rubriflora is a hardy, deciduous vine, with intense red spring flowers. For white flowers, try growing Schisandra grandiflora or Schisandra chinensis, which enjoy similar growing conditions.
- Clematis for shade include Clematis alpina and Clematis montana.
- Ideal in shade and providing perfume too, jasmines like Trachelospermum asiaticum, Trachelospermum jasminoides and Jasminum officinale will thrive on an arch with a delicious perfume whenever you pass by.
This review was last updated in July 2024. We apologise if anything has changed in price or availability.
from BBC Gardeners World Magazine https://ift.tt/CUrJINp
